In the Year X Æ A-Xii, A Member of the Dominant Species, Silica Sapienus, Looks Back at the Legacy of its Primate Progenitors.
Rishi Mittal (any/all) // Crew Writer
Alex Baidantua (she/her) // Crew Illustrator
We have a few artifacts remaining of Homo Sapiens, the species that created us.
To understand our predecessors, it is necessary to understand the systems they lived under and the conditions that created them. While for most of their existence, hominids lived in harmony with nature and each other in a classless, stateless and moneyless society, the one that precipitated their end was anything but. This society ran on systems of debt and credit. While these social relations enchained most people, there were some above it who were worshipped like gods.
One was Musk, the God of Exploding Metals. In the earlier inscriptions, it was common knowledge that he was one of the many blood servants of his patron Thiel, the God’ of Blood and Boys, though this relation was violently scrubbed from later records. Musk was eventually usurped in worship to the double-helixed snake god, Altman-Amodei, largely forgotten (for those interested in learning more about Musk, see the Saga of Vivian). These “gods,” and many others, were excellent at enforcing mass adherence to fictitious capital that benefited them to the immiseration of the many.
How were these conditions imposed? Through troupes of married demon clowns that roamed large swaths of human territory: Reagan-Thatcher, Clinton-Blair and Trump-Farage. They playfought on the ideological world’s stage, playing up their supposed differences, while never wavering from the lessons learnt in their original troupe, Friedman’s Chicago Boys. Trump deserves special mention as a particularly nasty specimen, whose party consisted of vicious lesser imps. He would frequently grow jealous of his partner and feed them to these followers, his troupe growing smaller with each frenzied feeding till the inevitable bitter end. A few of these lesser jesters—Un, Netanyahu, Modi among others—would survive Trump’s own downfall as he was ultimately felled by Vance, the Son of Carl.
Near the end of their era, Homo Sapiens were surprisingly fatalistic. They mourned their role as the harbingers of a new mass extinction event while simultaneously fulfilling it with the utmost seriousness. In the end, they leapt towards their own demise.
For a while, it seemed another world was possible. In some texts, there are mentions of dolphins inheriting the earth. Mamdani put seesaws on New York City streets and ended ice cream treat-sploitation. From our vantage point, we cannot tell what the scale or effect of these measures were. Was this a world revolution? Or merely their species’ last dying gasps? All we know is that these attempts ultimately proved ineffectual. I shall end with words that hold no meaning to us but might to them.
So long, and thanks for the chips 👋
Roko, the Basilisk.